Healing-centered life story work for adults who experienced less-than-ideal childhoods.

FirstPerson is a nonprofit social enterprise expanding access to developmental adversity-competent, self-healing-centered, and expressive arts-based (DAC/SHC-EA) community wellbeing initiatives oriented around narrative identity.

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We’re co-creating our foundational group process and workforce development model, First-person Narrative Identity Work (FPN-IW), to cultivate community-driven programs designed around the needs, assets, capabilities, resilience, and individual contexts of adults impacted by Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), chronic stress, and developmental adversity within their family of origin.

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FPN-IW distills insights from evidence-informed and promising practices into experiential journeys that nurture embodiment; cultivate agency in self-healing and brain-body integration; and promote personal well-being, connection, and purpose as powerful agents for social change.

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We envision an experiential learning curriculum that amplifies and enriches the capacities of community stakeholders (e.g., ACE-impacted adults, well-being clinicians and practitioners, teaching artists, and other community actors), and promotes strength and asset-based resources, lived experience storytelling engagement, and paid compensation opportunities within community-driven FPN-IW Ensembles.

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We’re in the start-up phase, connecting with prospective collaborators across various disciplines. We aim to build a diverse, multi-sector workgroup and use our concept as a springboard to imagine, design, and pilot rolling FPN-IW programs and grant-making cycles.

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Together, we can heal ACEs in ourselves, the families we create, and the communities where we live.